How to Hand Letter with Flourishing Details
/I partnered up with MUJI Canada to teach The Basic Techniques of Calligraphy Flourishing. If you have been wanting to level up your calligraphy and want to learn the tricks and trips on how to do flourishing, keep reading!
Before we jump right in, I have a free worksheet that you can download here and a recorded 1-hour lesson that you can watch here. This covers the warm-up, rules of flourishing, some tips and some samples.
A lot of times when you see a beautifully hand lettered design with perfect composition you don’t get to see the process. While I do freehand most of the time, here are the steps I used to do (and sometimes still do) to get perfectly flourished hand lettered design with flourishing details. Prepping is an important step to make sure your calligraphy strokes are parallel to each other and your flourishes are harmonized. Here are the steps:
Step 1: Draw the baseline
Your baseline is where your letters will sit on. Decide where you want to write the letters and whether it is at an angle or straight.
Step 2: Draw the x-height line
This is the height of your lowercase letters. If the word is long, I suggest making the x-height line shorter so all the letters can fit.
Step 3: Draw the slant lines
Slant lines are diagonal lines angled at approximately 52 - 55 degree. It doesn’t have to be exact, you can just guestimate. These slant lines are helpful to make sure your calligraphy strokes are parallel to each other. Use a grid ruler to help you create parallel slant lines.
Step 4: Draw the letters
Draw the letters within the base and x-heighlines. Skip all the ascender, descender loops and t-crossbars. You will want to decide where to flourish later so you don’t get stuck and over-flourish.
Step 5: Decide where to flourish
See which letters you can flourish that makes sense. Basically making sure that, the flourishes are balanced, not too overcrowded, but still legible.
Step 6: Audit your flourishes
Make sure all your flourishes are oval based. And that your ovals are parallel to the baseline or on slant. You can do this by:
Drawing ovals that are hugging your flourishing strokes.
Draw line dividing the oval to two.
If the line is parallel to the baseline or slant angles, you are fine. If not, you can fix the flourishes.
Step 7: Erase Guidelines and admire your work
If you would like to see how I would hand letter an Acacia plate with flourishing details, watch the video by clicking on the button below. I show a step-by-step process and the tools I use.
Happy flourishing friends!